


Crop Circles

by Talax



Category: LazyTown
Genre: Alien Sportacus, Alternate Universe - Aliens, M/M, Star Trek References, Trekkie Robbie
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-31
Updated: 2018-09-07
Packaged: 2019-06-19 03:43:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15501570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Talax/pseuds/Talax
Summary: Someone has been playing a prank on Lazytown's most notoriously nerdy Sci-Fi fan Robbie Rotten. Or so he believes.





	1. Chapter 1

Alone on his cement porch, Robbie sat and let the steam from his coffee fog his binoculars. He’d been keeping watch over the fields behind his lair for what must have been four hours now. He was starting to get tired. Actually he was always tired, so more precisely he was getting sleepy, bored, restless from scanning over the same fields of corn over and over. He really wanted to go to sleep, but he was at his wits end with the local pranksters.

He put his binoculars down a moment, rubbed his eyes, and sipped at his fourth cup of coffee. With his naked eyes, he could see in the hilly dips of the field some of the places where the husks had been chopped short in little circles. Crop circles. It was a classic prank for farming folk, and a perfect prank to play on the resident trekkie.

Everyone knew Robbie was an obsessive Star Trek fan. He didn’t talk about it, but anyone could see him hauling out his trunks of costumes during convention season. He had, on occasion, accidentally worn pieces from his Starfleet uniform collection, because laundry was hard and remembering what you were wearing during sudden emergency grocery runs was even harder.

At any rate, his status as the town sci-fi geek was well established, so it was impossible to know which little punk had been playing this convoluted prank on him for the past month. Robbie was determined to watch until his little prankster would strike again. Not really to catch the kids, but so he would know who to prank back. 

It didn’t happen every night, but a couple times a week the tapestry of circles would grow larger and larger. Whoever it was didn’t strike during Robbie’s normal waking hours, so it was probably sometime in the early morning. That's why Robbie was still awake at 4 am, for the third night in a row. He was going to find his prankster if it was the last thing he did.

Or maybe he’d find a real alien.

No. Definitely not. That was silly. 

He believed in aliens, but not the kind that leave crop circles. He was absolutely sure that this was the work of a dedicated kid making fun of him. As soon as he started to believe that these crop circles might possibly _maybe_ be real aliens then the prankster would win. Everyone would laugh at him. They’d come out of the cornfield and the bushes and the trees and point and laugh and Robbie would never leave his lair again. 

He could see their faces, distorted horribly in disgust and contempt.

A thunderous sound woke Robbie with a start. He hadn’t even realized he had fallen asleep at his post. He blinked and tried to process the waking world. He couldn’t make it out, but there was something big in the cornfield, silhouetted by the moon, illuminated by the floodlights of the billboard. A blimp? It looked like a giant dome attached to a cockpit half entrenched in the earth, countless lights blinking in unknown patterns.

Robbie tried to rub the dream out of his eyes but it stayed. This wasn’t a dream or a hallucination and it certainly wasn’t a prank.

Robbie scrambled off the concrete and dashed towards the wreck. His lungs burned and is limps flailed awkwardly, but someone--something?--could be in trouble. 

As he got closer to the metal frame of the cockpit, Robbie spotted a lump--something alive--laying surrounded by shards of glass. “Hey!” He called out, trying to sound as non-threatening as he could. “Are you okay?”

The figure stirred, lifting its head and locking eyes with Robbie.

Robbie stopped dead in his tracks. The thing was undeniably alien; its skin was blue and its eyes were black, reflecting the sparks spitting from the vessel. What must have been blood was smeared across its face and the cobalt blueness of it was striking against the creature’s white hair. He was pretty sure the poor thing was too injured to do him any harm. 

It was really a _real life_ alien. An _alien_ had been making his crop circles. He couldn’t believe it. He didn’t know whether to be terrified or overjoyed.

“Robbie?” A voice said in the night.

Robbie jumped and looked around, but the only people in sight were himself and alien.

“Don’t run away, please,” the alien requested cordially.

Robbie felt every hair on his body stand on end. The alien knew his name. The alien was speaking perfect English. Well, he--the alien sounded like a he--had some kind of accent, but he was speaking English all the same.

“I’ve been studying you. Please, my leg--I can’t walk. I know you’ll help me.”

Robbie couldn’t really process what the alien had said. Not fully, something about knowing him, something about needing help. Against his better judgement, Robbie found himself walking forward. Maybe it was a secret altruistic part of himself, maybe it was his curiosity or maybe both that brought him to where he was, right in front of the alien, looking down into his black eyes. He lowered himself and looked over the alien’s form--he was roughly human shaped. Definitely smaller though, and, as he had already noticed, much bluer. He reached out a trembling hand and the alien took it, grabbed it, holding it tight.

The alien held his hand tightly, but more than that he held held Robbie in his stare; Robbie felt like he couldn’t blink with the alien’s intense gaze boring into him. It felt significant and intense and Robbie couldn’t be more lost. The alien suddenly pulled himself up with such force he nearly knocked them both over. 

“You’re heavy!” Robbie swayed as he took the alien’s arm over his shoulder. 

“I know. I’m more dense than you are,” the alien’s voice was alarmingly gentle for how injured he seemed, “But we’re just a little ways from your lair now, Robbie.”

Robbie’s head flopped to in frow in a shiver, “Would you stop doing that. Don’t you know it’s rude to call someone by their name before you’ve been introduced?”

“I am sorry, R-” the alien caught himself, limping with a little more speed. “I don’t know many of the rules. I am new to this place.”

“Yeah, no shit.” Robbie scoffed.

“No shit…” The alien repeated in puzzled way. “Yes, there is no excrement here.”

“No… No it means- Whatever just-” he was struggling to twist open the hatch of the equipment elevator he hardly used.

The alien leaned his weight over from Robbie to the elevator, stretched his surprisingly large hands over the wheel and turned it so it let out one large squeak before firing back to life.

“Jesus,” Robbie tentatively followed the alien into the elevator. In the bright lights of the elevator Robbie got a better look at the alien straining to support his weight against a support bar. He hadn’t even noticed before the two antanue pressing back against his white hair. He was blue. So blue and wearing darker blue, stained with the cobalt of his blood. If the blood didn’t look so unreal it would have made Robbie queasy. 

“I don’t know anything about medicine-” Robbie said. “Should I call an ambulance?”

“No, thank you,” the alien said, voice chillingly calm. “I am a-” he searched for a moment, head tilted upward a little. Robbie noticed that his eyes didn’t move, or at least he couldn’t see any movement in the total blackness of them. “I don’t know your words. I can fix my body.”

“Okay,” Robbie said, voice edging on panic as the elevator took its time descending. “What do you want from me?”

“I need water and a flat place, please.”

“Okay.” Robbie said again. After a moment of silence he asked, “Why do you know my name?”

The elevator bell dinged as the doors slide open. 

“My name is Sportacus.”

“Sporta… Sportacus?“ Robbie repeated, “Is that really your name?”

“I have told you, my name is Sportacus. Now I can call you Robbie, please?”

Robbie shrugged and offered his shoulder to the alien- to Sportacus. “I guess so?”

“Thank you. Please bring me to where I am flat.”

“I um… The ground is hard here. Do you want my chair?”

“A water room please.” Sportacus’s voice changed very little as he spoke, but Robbie thought this time he sounded a little quieter, a little softer.

“Bathroom.” Robbie said and shuffled them both over.

“Good, thank you. Into that,” he pointed to the tub.

Robbie was silently grateful that Sportacus hadn’t wanted to sit in his chair. That blue blood would have stained in forever. Sportacus unfastened his outfit in three little buttons and it slipped from him, down to the ground. His under-clothing covered him from toe to neck, white and light blue patterns that would have been very crisp and flattering if not for all the blood. Robbie could see now that is leg had been cut up significantly by the glass in the cockpit. But his leg didn’t look broken. At least not the way _human_ broken looked. 

Sportacus eased himself down into the tub. “Pull this for water?” he asked as he touched the handle.

“Yeah, left is hot and right is cold.” 

Sportacus looked at Robbie blankly. “Blue is cold.” Robbie pointed at the proper side.

Sportacus smiled and let out a laugh. “Blue is cold. That is different.”

It startled Robbie to hear the alien emote that way, maybe even scared him a little. “Oh. I guess so.”

“Can you bring me that soft thing, please?” Sportacus pointed to a shelf of towels. 

“Sure,” Robbie brought the pile down for him. He would let Sportacus bleed on those. He needed to buy new towels anyway. When he set them down Sportacus had started the water, running his hands under the stream to check the temperature. It was very… familiar. human.

“That is all I need, thank you. I will be done in… I am not used to your time telling here. About one sixth the time of your day.”

“What?” Robbie did the mental math quickly. “You just need 4 hours and some hot water?” 

“Yes.” Sportacus said, settling back into the water in his clothes and everything. “You should sleep, please. You have been awake for longer than your body wants.”

Robbie mumbled his agreement to that. “Well. If you need me I’ll be right outside…”

“Good night, Robbie,” Sportacus said, the words all sounding a little too seperate to be natural. 

“Good night, Sportacus,” Robbie replied, words feeling equally foreign. 

He closed the door and blinked in amazement at his situation. He had an alien in his bathtub. And a UFO smoldering in the backyard. And the alien knew his name already. Why? What did it mean? How could he possibly sleep? 

He sat down in his orange chair, propped up his legs, reclined all the way back, and without a second thought fell right to sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

_Previous research by [UNTRANSLATABLE] ([EARTH YEAR 1988]) and [UNTRANSLATABLE] ([EARTH YEAR 2001]) on the sentient humanoid dwellers of planet Earth (humans) established that the predominant culture is individualistic, self-sabotaging, and slow to accept progress.The professional and government consensus is that humans are not a likely candidate for cross-solar system relations largely due to these traits, especially their reluctance to be open to cultural difference even amongst their own species and their inability to change behavior._

_This paper seeks to answer two questions, the first of which being:_ can humans change _? The axis of change is the discontinuation of dis-health behaviors and the adoption of new healthy behaviors. The population studied is a small isolated human settlement called “Lazytown”, literally meaning a dwelling of people who do not willingly engage in laboring tasks..._

——————————————

Robbie awoke to an urgent rapping coming from somewhere inside his lair. He blinked himself awake and looked around. It was coming from his bathroom where, Robbie remembered all at once, he had an extraterrestrial visitor in his bathtub. Robbie scrambled to his feet as his mind pieced together the disharmonic sound—knuckles tapping quickly against the bathtub. 

“Sportacus?” Robbie asked as he stepped towards the door, “What’s going on in there?”

“I am needing your help.” Sportacus’s voice informed him calmly through the door, tone a stark contrast to the panicked knocking.

Robbie hesitated, rubbing a hand through his hair. “Should I come in?”

“Yes, thank you.”

Robbie opened the door and peaked in, seeing Sportacus still sitting in the tub, spandex undersuit and all. It was hard to tell for sure with the difference in species, but Robbie thought he looked nervous, ansty—his hands gripping and ungripping the sides of the bathtub. 

Robbie came in a little further, and felt that the room was thick with moisture, steam from a fresh refill of hot water rose around Sportacus.

“My leg,” Sportacus said, water rushing loudly in the tub as he lifted the limb. “It is being more hurt than I was thinking. My fixing sleep was not enough.”

Robbie looked at Sportacus’s leg closer, but he couldn’t see anything wrong with it. Nothing at all, actually. 

“Your cuts are all gone…” Robbie realized, muttering in quiet disbelief.

There were many tears in the spandex but the cobalt blood from before was gone, just smooth skin in its place. Had sitting in the bathtub really closed and healed all these alien’s lacerations? It was astounding. Was it a technological or biological healing process? Robbie had so many questions but he felt Sportacus’s sort-of-urgency made this hardly the time for inquiry.

“Yes. My skin is healed. My muscle is not.” Sportacus explained, laying the leg against the side of the tub. 

“Um,” Robbie asserted awkwardly. Robbie searched the alien’s black eyes hoping to see a glimmer of how grave the injury was. It sounded pretty serious, but he just didn’t know. He didn’t even know what he _should_ do if it was serious. How do you help an alien?

“Should I take you to a doctor?”

“No, please.” Sportacus said, sounding very polite. “We can make it healthy. I do not wish to involve your human government in this.

“I must ask you,” Sportacus continued, and Robbie took note that the alien’s antenna were pressing themselves as far back against his damp hair as they could go. “I need an object from my ship and I can not use this leg, please. I will describe to you where the object is being.”

Well, Robbie had always wanted to visit a spaceship.

———————

Robbie stood on the cement of his lair and looked out over the field. It was the early morning now, the sun just starting to color the sky. He took a deep breath and stood up a little straighter. He wasn’t usually one to go out of his way to help strangers, but this was a bonafide U.F.O. for goodness sakes—how could he not take the opportunity to glimpse real alien technology?

Dew clung to the bottoms of his favorite striped pants as he made his way through the grass of his lawn and onto the wreckage in the corn. In the morning light, Robbie could see the colors of the ship, red and blue and white. It wasn’t very camouflaged at all, and the corn wasn’t tall enough to conceal it either. The ship must have some kind of clocking device on it for Robbie to have noticed it before—there must have been a _before_ since Sportacus knew his name when he had just crashed. Sportacus had said that he’d been _studying_ him. Robbie felt a chill at the concept. What had his alien-in-distress meant by that?

Robbie stepped carefully, watching out for blue-tinted shattered glass as he approached the iron skeleton of the cockpit. He peaked his head in carefully and found that the space was… not exactly what he had imagined a spacecraft to look like. It looked rather like a large empty room in an open house for a modernly designed home. The cockpit wasn’t any bigger than his lair, but the emptiness of it was colossal. 

Impressively, the cockpit’s structural integrity had remained intact despite the crash. However, the force of the crash left the ship partially entrenched in the earth and the floor unleveled at a strong 30 degree slant. Robbie wouldn’t be able to just walk up the smooth floor at this angle, and the open design meant there wasn’t much for Robbie to hold onto. There was a large vertical pole standing at the center of the ship that he should be able to grab onto if he had enough momentum to get there.

This away mission was turning out to be a lot more work and a lot less adventurous than he had hoped. He couldn’t turn back though; he still had an alien that needed his help.

Robbie dashed forward with all the might his awkward and chronically under used body could muster and by some combination of luck and determination he successfully grasped the pole. He pulled himself up and rested his body weight against the pole, looking around at the ship at his new vantage point.

Sportacus had described a series of buttons that would be along the base of the floor, a couple different positions, all to open different compartments of the ship. It had been rather difficult for Sportacus to describe _which_ button to press because _apparently_ on his planet they didn’t have a concept of left or right. They seemed to have something akin to clockwise/counterclockwise and with that plus a scribbled diagram Robbie examined the floor. After turning the piece of paper to just about every angle possible, he crumbled the thing and stuffed it into his vest pocket. 

At random, Robbie decided on a button and tapped it when his shoe. He wobbled and lost his balance as a bed sprung down from the wall. He caught himself against the pole and straightened back out. 

“That’s not it,” Robbie said to himself as he imagined what it would be like to sleep in that little bed in a big empty room up in space.

He moved on to his second guess, having to stretch his leg out a little further to hit it. Some kind of storage unit opened up and spun to life, flipping several flat screens to Robbie’s face.

“There we go!” Robbie said as he adjusted his grip on the pole. The screens were all blacked out just as Sportacus had explained—the auxiliary power had been switched to life support. Actually, what Sportacus had said was _‘there is being no power to not needed things’_ but Robbie was pretty sure the Star Trek lingo was closer to what he was trying to say. But what had Sportacus said to do next? 

Robbie took the paper out of his pocket again and smoothed it back down. He scowled and squinted, but he couldn’t read his own atrocious handwriting in the dim morning light. One word looked a little like “again,” so he was pretty sure he was supposed to hit the same button again. He reached out and tapped it with his toes a second time.

The closet whirred and like a revolving door and new shelves spun into place. This looked right. There were many symbols on boxes and shapes that Robbie didn't understand, but one he did. Robbie consulted the sheet in his pocket and looked between it and the symbol on a black box—a complexly ornate circle. It was a first aid kit.

Robbie braced himself for the slant of the ship and jumped towards the closet. True to his clumsy nature, he tripped at the worst moment but managed to grab a hold of the closet and grab the box before losing his balance again and stumbling down the sloped floor.

He flailed about as he tried to find something to catch himself. Suddenly, he felt the wind being knocked out of him and he wasn’t falling. 

He must have stepped on another button in his panic and opened this panel that jutted out from the wall directly in the trajectory of his fall.

Robbie couldn’t decide whether he could count the misstep as luck or if it would have been better to fall to front of the ship and _not_ have the wind knocked from him. At least the panel was flat and smooth, like a table or desk, but no chairs had popped out to match. 

As he caught his breath he looked forward and realized he’d accidentally knocked something else out of the closet.

He lowered himself to the floor under the table and sat, letting himself slide down the smooth surface to where the object had fallen. It was… something. He couldn’t tell but it was tiny black with little divots pimpled into the surface. The object felt like it had something inside of it when he shook it, maybe something mechanical. Robbie wasn’t sure if it was a part of the closet construction or an object all it’s on. It was really hard to tell with all this alien stuff—what if it was important? 

Robbie slipped it in his pocket. He’d ask Sportacus what to do with it later. But for now, he had an alien to save.


	3. Chapter 3

_The predominant economic system of human cultures has pushed for food and lifestyle antagonistic to living their complete lifespans. Consumption of “fast food” (food characterized by its quick-accessibility, low-cost, and highly dense fat contents), of psychotropic fermented beverages, of carbon-infused sugar syrup drinks, lack of access or knowledge to healthy food, and lack of physical exertion are key factors in human dis-health. All of these factors are known by human researchers and the human populus alike, but humans receive conflicting messages between scientists and the institutions which generate profit from the sale of objects of human dis-health._

_The theoretical section of this paper will discuss examples of the tendency for humans to hold two opposing moralities at once, both with equal weight, and how this tendency is blocking human cultures’ progress. The first example of this internal human discord is the knowledge of the dis-health of their behaviors and the perceived internalized need for the same behavior. One human in particular is presented to offer an in-depth look at human attitudes towards healthy behaviors._

When Robbie returned to his lair, he beelined for the bathroom. “Sportacus? Can I come in?” Robbie asked before he’d even gotten to the door. 

“Hello, Robbie.” The alien’s voice came through the door in its neutral leaning-towards-pleasant manner. “Yes, thank you.” 

Robbie opened the door and found the alien back to his gripping and ungripping of the bathtub, looking a few shades lighter and duller than he had been before.

“Oh geez, you're not looking so good.” Robbie commented making his way quickly to the edge of the tub, “at least I think not? Hard to know with aliens”

“You are right--I am not looking so good. I am hurting quite much. And we do not do very well with sitting for long.”

Robbie wasn’t sure what Sportacus meant by _’we’_ but he had more important things to worry about. “What do I do with this?” Robbie asked holding up the case Sportacus had sent him to receive.

“I am needing to get out of the water now, please.” Sportacus said, “I am too weak to be doing alone.”

“Oh,” Robbie mumbled. “You want me to lift you?” Robbie asked weakly.

“Yes, to there.” Sportacus pointed to the floor beside the tub.

“I guess I’ll have to try…” Robbie said as he got onto his knees next to the tub.

Robbie felt suddenly nervous as he wrapped his arms around the alien. Sportacus was firm all over, damp and warm against Robbie’s forearms. Robbie struggled under the weight of him; this position was so much more difficult to maneuver then carrying Sportacus on his shoulder the night prior--but after a substantial effort, Robbie had Sportacus onto the bathside rug, hands on either side of him, trying to catch his breath.

Sportacus seemed to gain a little color to his face: a bit more blue, which suited his features quite nicely. Sportacus had many features that were unknown to Robbie; his black eyes, for example, were wide with an emotion Robbie couldn’t decipher. But despite its unfamiliar parts, Sportacus’s face was what Robbie would consider _handsome_ for a human man. He enjoyed looking at it, trying to interpret the movement in Sportacus’s blank eyes for direction or emotion.

“Robbie,” Sportacus started to say.

And Robbie realized that he had been hunched over Sportacus far too long. He straightened himself out, getting off his poor, wounded alien. He felt his face burn in embarrassment, and hoped Sportacus would excuse his awkwardness as a culture clash and not a personal failing.

“Sorry,” Robbie said trying to cover the red in his face with his hands. “First aid. Yes, that.” He scrambled to find the box again, placing it between them.

Sportacus looked at Robbie, his antennae straightened to the top of his head. Robbie noticed a little knot in one of Sportacus’s antennae, making it stick a little more crooked after the knot. The movement reminded Robbie of a little dog, perking its ears up in interest. 

“Red…” Sportacus said, reaching out to touch Robbie’s face, which certainly didn’t make Robbie any less red. “Your blood is red, why am I seeing it?” Sportacus’s hand was against Robbie’s, brushing against the knuckles, exchanging warmth. 

Robbie was sure this was the reddest he’d ever been in his life. “Y-Yes… that happens to humans when we’re… embarrassed.”

Sportacus pulled his hand away and leaned back on his arm. “Embarrassed.” Sportacus said, smiling a little, “This happens to us too.” 

Robbie took a deep breath and removed his hands from his face. He shouldn’t feel so embarrassed about being close to his injured alien. He needed to focus on Sportacus’s injuries. “What do I do with this box, then?” he asked, holding the thing between them and looking only at it. “I can’t figure out how you’re supposed to open it.”

“No opening.” Sportacus said, “Put it underneath my hurting leg, thank you.”

“Oh? Okay.” Robbie carefully pushed the box underneath the leg Sportacus was lifting.

Sportacus shifted his weight to lean back on his arms and prop his leg up with the box. “The shape,” Sportacus tried to explain, having to search for words a little more than usual. “Touch your finger to it and move to make the shape.”

Robbie squinted, trying to process the instructions. The only thing Robbie could see on the box was the symbol Sportacus had told him to identify the box by. The pattern of overlaping cirlces. “Trace my finger along the circles?”

“Yes.”

“Where do I start?”

“Not important. You are only needing to touch all of the circle.”

Robbie looked closer at the thing. The symbol was slightly indented from the rest of the box and glowed faintly from some internal light source. He placed his finger on one of the circles and felt the electronics of it thrumming a little stronger. It was an unusual sensation, thrumming growing as Robbie traced his finger around and around.

Then, the hard material of the box seemed to wobble and warp into something viscous and shimmering. Robbie pulled away instinctively as he felt the substance start to creep up his finger. The substance engulfed the section of Sportacus’s leg, swallowing it up in its shifting, bubbling mass. It slowed its warping down and settled to be about a centimeter thick all the way around, conforming perfectly to the shape of Sportacus’s leg.

Sportacus tested it a little, moving his leg up and down and in little circles from his place on the floor. The substance gave way for his muscle to strain.

“What on earth was that?” Robbie exclaimed, breathless from the experience.

“You do not have this on earth, but it will make faster the healing and I am okay for using it a small amount.” Sportacus started to try to pull himself up, but had trouble. “Robbie, I am sorry. I am needing to eat.”

“Oh my god.” Robbie said, slapping his head. “It’s been almost twelve hours hasn’t it? I’m so sorry.” He helped Sportacus with standing up. “We’ll find something for you to eat in the kitchen.”

Sportacus hobbled with Robbie to the kitchen--if you could call it that. The ‘kitchen’ was really a shared space with Robbie’s inventions. There was a fridge and a microwave and an oven mixed in the same space that he hammered away at spare parts.

“So…” Robbie asked leaning against his kitchen counter, send some unused pvc pipes rolling about. “What do aliens eat?”

Sportacus looked around the space, “Do you have any…” Sportacus searched for the words he wanted. “anything… sweet?”

“I have plenty of sweets!” Robbie said, excited to be able to feed Sportacus so easily. “Do you eat chocolate candy?” Robbie opened a drawer that held lots of individually wrapped chocolates.

Sportacus picked one up and held it close to his face to examine. “This isn’t right… Not this candy. I need candy that makes you strong for activity. Sports-candy?”

“Sports-candy?” Robbie would have laughed if he wasn’t so busy trying to figure out what to feed this starving alien. “I have no idea what that is.”

Sportacus opened a cabinet and some loose nails spilled out. “I am confused by how you keep your things…” Sportacus tapped his face, “Sportscandy… It… Grows on plants?”

“Fruit?” Robbie asked, making a bit of a sour face. “Are you talking about fruit?” He closed the cabinet Sportacus was looking through and opened a different one. “If you’re looking for fruit… I don’t have any.”

“Not any?” Sportacus’s eyebrows shot up--the expression surprised Robbie for how neutral he’d appeared until now.

“No…” Robbie said, squinting at Sportacus, “That isn’t all you can eat is it?”

“That’s all I can eat.” Sportacus’s antenna curled back against his head. “How are you having all the carbohydrates you need without sportscandy?”

“Carbs?” Robbie asked. “That’s the stuff in like bread and cake and stuff? I have plenty of that.” Robbie opened his fridge and pulled out some leftover cake. “This is carbs.”

Sportacus’s black eyes widened. “Robbie, your body is needing more plant carbohydrates than this. Haven’t you gotten my messages?”

“I’m perfectly fine eating cake thank you.” Robbie crossed his arms. “Wait… your what?”

“The images I am leaving for you when I take the sportscandy from the ground.”

“The crop circles?” Robbie asked. “I’ve never been able to decipher them…” Robbie admitted, feeling very lost in the conversation. He scrambled to open a drawer, taking out the photographs of crop circles he’d captured.

Sportacus took a marker from the drawer as well and drew on top of the photographs. 

Robbie looked at them blankly. The first picture was an apple. The smaller circles that had been appearing were supposed to be grapes. Robbie leaned on the counter.

“Why _on earth_ were you drawing _fruit_ in the cornfield?” 

“Because Robbie,” Sportacus smiled, recapping the pen and tossing it up and down in his hand. “You should be eating more sportscandy for your health.”

For his health? Robbie didn’t understand. And Sportacus remembering how to emote was really throwing him for a loop. Robbie blinked hard, shook his head and couldn’t seem to find the words to respond. 

“I knew you weren’t getting good foods, but I was not knowing you had no good foods at all.”

“What?” Robbie asked, laughing in disbelief. “No. I don’t understand why you care about my… my eating habits? That’s insane.”

“I don’t understand why you do not care about your eating habits?” Sportacus tilted his head. “You should be caring.”

“I- That’s beside the point…”

“Beside the point…” Sportacus tilted his head in the other direction, causing his antanue to bounce as he considered the turn of phrase.

“It means- Ugh! Whatever!” Robbie grunted. “Look. I want to get you whatever special alien food you need for your alien body but you’re really freaking me out with all this… you knowing about my dietary habits stuff? It’s weird, Sportacus-- are you listening?”

Sportacus was bouncing from one foot to the other. “Yes, Robbie! I will cease talking about your dietary habits until I have food, thank you.”

“Okay. Well I guess that’s a start.” Robbie pinched the bridge of his nose as he thought. “Okay. Okay. I need to get you fruit. Where do you get fruit?”

“There is much fruit growing in the center of where the people are.”

“In town.” Robbie figured. “And I’m guessing you can’t get it yourself because you’re too weak… and blue…”

“Yes.” Sportacus agreed, he’d started… Stretching? As they were talking.

Robbie narrowed his eyes. “This is going to ruin my reputation but,” Robbie gagged before he could spit out, “I’ll go get you some fruit.”

————————

Robbie was an outstanding Lazytowner. He always slept late, never ate his fruits or vegetables, and never ever EVER exercised on purpose. He was _so_ well-liked he’d won the crown at the _Miss Lazytown_ Pageant on several occasions. He was held as truly a pillar of lethargy, the King, Queen—the whole royal flush of lethargy.

Which is why he shouldn’t— _couldn’t_ risk his reputation trying to pick _apples_.

Robbie peeked over a low wall and assessed the scene: not a soul in sight. That was good, maybe he’d be able to swoop in and get the apples before any of those nosy kids wandered into town. Robbie reeled up his trusty unsavory-thingy-grabber 2000—a fishpole/grappling hook combo—aimed for a shiny red apple and fired.

The unsavory-thingy-grabber 2000’s projectile grappling hook hit the tree with a thunk, downing several apples at once. 

“Ah. I meant to do that.” He told no one in particular.

“Meant to do what?” 

Robbie gasped dramatically and toppled off the short wall he’d made his vantage.

The little blonde boy who lived in town was looking at him with his big curious eyes. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing!” Robbie said, “None of your business Candy-Boy.”

“It’s Ziggy!” 

“Whatever.” Robbie mumbled. “Can’t you mind your own business?”

Ziggy went to pick up an apple from the ground and handed it to Robbie. “You wanted this red thing huh?”

Robbie squinted. Did this kid _really_ not know what an apple was? He mentally added it to his list of reasons Lazytown was the best place on earth. 

“Yes,” Robbie decided to say. “It’s not for me.” He added just in case.

Ziggy picked up a couple more and Robbie balanced them in his arms. “Say, Robbie. Did you hear that big loud crash the other night?” 

“No!” Robbie said, “I mean—what crash? No.” Lying was one of his weakest villain-y qualities. Unless he had an elaborate dramatic costume, he felt too exposed to lie well.

“It was a big crash like—” Ziggy made a sort of humming noise and then made his own explosion sound effect, dramatically flailing about and spinning around.

Robbie recoiled from the child’s sudden over activity. “Why don’t you take that energy and put it into eating candy.” Robbie suggested.

“I already did! It makes me hyper! And I want to find the big crash!” Ziggy said, spinning around in circles. “What if it was a big asteroid filled with- with _space_ candy?”

“There’s no such thing as space candy.” Robbie said. “Asteroids are _boring_ and made of boring old burnt up rocks.”

“Rocks from _space_!” Ziggy exclaimed. “You love space more than anyone I know, Robbie. Aren’t you excited?”

Robbie crossed his arms and wrinkled his nose in thought. “No,” he said rather unconvincingly. “Because… I only care about aliens and aliens aren’t real.”

“What if they are?” Ziggy said, bouncing on the balls of his feet. “I heard there were crop circles in one of the cornfields outside of town.”

“That’s just a prank. Look, Zoggy-”

“Ziggy!” he interrupted without losing an ounce of enthusiasm.

“Zeggy. I want aliens to be real too but they _aren’t_ you should find something else to put your candy energy into.”

Ziggy considered Robbie’s words. “Okay, Robbie. I think I’ll go take a nap.”

Robbie patted his head. “An outstanding lazy idea. I’ll do the same.” 

Ziggy ran off and Robbie gathered up a bunch of apples before hurrying off to his lair before anyone else could see him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> update!! hello friends this fic is still on-going but I won't be updating until at least December. I'm in my first creative writing course and I'm learning a lot! But I have to do a lot of writing for it so I have to put my two fic on the back burner for now. Still really excited about this concept so good things to come in 2019!


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